Sunday Newspapers and Lived Religion in Late Nineteenth-Century America

Abstract

Everyday meanings and practices show how religion is actually lived. Understandings can become varied and sometimes contradictory as people do creative cultural work with sacred matters. Actions can reveal resistance and ways to innovate.1 Blue laws and the customs of the Puritan were supposed to provide nineteenth-century Americans with a day of rest and religious concentration, but other conceptions of what to do with the time were emerging. Antebellum reformers and freethinkers used the day for meetings and lectures. By mid-century, the continental of drinking and popular entertainment had been introduced by immigrants from Germany, Ireland, and elsewhere. In the final third of the century, liberal Protestants argued that opening libraries and museums and allowing some secular pastimes on Sunday could be beneficial for moral development and democracy. They contended that uplifting cultural activities and innocent diversions could direct attention to the community, the family, and nature in a society that was increasingly